New Environment Law to Deliver a Green Brexit

A new Environmental Principles and Governance Bill will ensure environmental protections will not be weakened as we leave the EU, the government has confirmed.

A consultation has started today on the contents of the Environmental
Principles and Governance Bill, which will establish a world-leading
body to hold government to account for environmental outcomes.

The body will support our commitment to be the first generation
to leave our environment in a better state than that in which we
inherited it. It will provide scrutiny and advice as we protect
and enhance our precious landscapes, wildlife and natural assets
and would be able to hold government to account on environmental
legislation.

Subject to consultation, the new body could specifically be responsible
for:

providing independent scrutiny and advice on existing and future
government environmental law and policy;

responding to complaints
about government’s delivery of environmental law; and

holding
government to account publicly over its delivery of environmental
law and exercising enforcement powers where necessary.

The Government is also consulting on its intention to require
ministers to produce – and then have regard to –a statutory and
comprehensive policy statement setting out how they will apply
core environmental principles as they develop policy and discharge
their responsibilities. Currently environmental decisions made
in the UK – from improving air and water quality to protecting
endangered species – are overseen by the European Commission
and underpinned by a number of these principles, such as the
precautionary principle, sustainable development and the ‘polluter
pays’ principle.

While these principles are already central to government environmental
policy, they are not set out in one place besides the EU treaties.
The new Environmental Principles and Governance Bill will ensure
governments continue to have regard to important environmental
principles through the policy statement, which would be scrutinised
by Parliament. The consultation seeks views on whether or not the
principles to be contained in the policy statement should be listed
in primary legislation.

Environment
Secretary Michael Gove said:
As the Prime Minister
has made clear, we will not weaken environmental protections when
we leave the EU. A new Environmental Principles and Governance
Bill will ensure core environmental principles remain central to
government policy and decision-making. This will help us to deliver
a Green Brexit and the vision set out in our 25
Year Environment Plan.

But we will only achieve our aims by also creating a strong and
objective voice that champions and enforces environmental standards.
That’s why our Environmental Principles and Governance Bill will
also create an independent and statutory watchdog. This will hold
governments to account for delivering their commitments to the
natural world.

The consultation, which will run for 12 weeks, seeks views on
the most effective way for the new body to hold government to account,
which would include, as a minimum, the power to issue advisory
notices. The consultation asks what further enforcement mechanisms
may be necessary.

The Environmental Principles and Governance Bill will be published
in draft in the autumn. Public consultation on the environmental
principles policy statement will follow in due course. The Bill
will be introduced early in the second session of this Parliament,
ensuring these measures are introduced in time for the end of the
implementation period in December 2020. EU environmental governance
structures will continue to apply during the implementation period.

The consultation is concerned with environmental governance in
England and reserved matters throughout the UK, for which the UK
government has responsibility. However, we are exploring with the
devolved administrations whether they wish to take a similar approach.
We would welcome the opportunity to co-design proposals with them
to ensure they work across the whole UK, taking account of the
different government and legal systems in the individual nations.